Tuesday, November 1, 2011

St James's Catholic Church, Coorparoo

This is one of the first buildings that I can remember looking at and thinking "Now that is impressive!" I was only a kid, and I used to pass this church on the way to visit relatives. I knew it was a church, but that wasn't why I thought it impressive. It was the scale of the thing - the sheer size of it that captured my attention. This photograph is from 1932.

(Photo: State Library of Queensland and John Oxley Library; #1026000

Who else but Archbishop James Duhig would have been the prime mover behind the construction of this church? In fact he presided over the opening of two churches on this site - the first was a combination church and school that opened in 1913, shown below.

(Photo: http://www.stjames-coorparoo.org.au/our_history.htm)

Then the current church that was inaugurated in 1928. This is the way it looks today.

After the completion of the original church, a presbytery was also constructed on the eastern side of the same property. Here is a picture of it from 1915.

(Photo: State Library of Queensland and John Oxley Library; #158103)

The parish was taken over by the Augustinians in 1952, and in 1958 the presbytery became a priory of the Augustinian community. The building was renovated to provide more room for the priests - look at what they did to it!